Many schools now use text messaging to communicate administrative messages to parents; this project will test whether this channel of communication could be used more extensively and creatively to ‘nudge’ parents to engage in their child’s learning. Parents will be texted prompts for home conversations related to what the child learnt that week, details of their child’s progress, (e.g., recent marks or attendance records), or other important information, (e.g., upcoming tests or homework deadlines).
The project will test which types of messages have the greatest impact on parental engagement and pupil attainment. It will involve a phase of developmental work to understand the technical feasibility of the approach, and explore the prompts that are most likely to have an impact on parental engagement. This will be followed by a randomised controlled trial to test the impact of these messages on pupil attainment.
Research Team: Professor Simon Burgess (Principal Investigator, CMPO), Raj Chande ( CMPO; Behavioural Insights Team), Todd Rogers (University of Harvard)
Funder: Education Endowment Foundation
Timescale: Awarded September 2013; Pilot: October 2013 – July 2014; full implementation and analysis: August 2014 – July 2015 (1 year)
Stage: Full implementation
